TACO support for 5x 3.5" SATA II HDD (NAS)

[justanothernoob]

Hi - I’m looking to replace my Synology DS414Slim NAS units. New Synology units mean I’ll need to sell my first-born’s organs so I’m looking into jerry-rigging my own SMBC solution.

I’ll take the opportunity to run a PLEX server from it plus increase the storage capacity to 80TB (5x 20TB 3.5" SATA III HDD striped with RAID 5 for parity).

While I have 25 years’ experience in IT it’s been mainly in the Windows world with a few (very few) attempts to explore the Linux world so this will pretty much be all new territory for me - but happy to Google, YouTube and read HowTos …

Current thoughts are either:

• Raspberry Pi 5 with separate cables and drive-tray connected to either RADXA Penta HAT or M.2 NVMe JMB585 5x SATA HAT card - but apparently RPi5 is a tad slower so I’m favouring the following RADXA options (both with 16 or 32GB to remove any potential RAID 5 performance bottle-necks)…

• RADXA Rock 5B+ with M.2 NVMe JMB585 5x SATA card. I like that I can use an M.2 NVMe for the boot drive as YouTube tests suggest that the OS performance is much higher, which should help with the RAID 5 NAS performance.

• RADXA Taco with RADXA CM5. I was thinking to use the convenience of the onboard eMMC for OS but apparently M.2 NVME is still faster for that and also more reliable / less prone to errors and also easier to replace? However for my purposes, we could be talking about diminishing returns.

While these options might seem expensive, they’re 3-4 times cheaper than buying an OOB solution from Synology & co.

Does anyone know if:

1. RADXA Rock 5B+ or Taco can be used with a 12v DC PSU (circa 150w) to provide power to the 5x 3.5" HDD or do I need to power the drives separately?
2. RADXA Taco can handle 5x 3.5" HDD being plugged directly into the existing onboard SATA ports? (i.e. Taco used like a back-plane).

Thanks in advance for any help offered

[radrocks]

Does anyone know if:

1. RADXA Rock 5B+ or Taco can be used with a 12v DC PSU (circa 150w) to provide power to the 5x 3.5" HDD or do I need to power the drives separately?

If that 12v DC PSU is simply capable enough, then at least for a ROCK5B this works ( it accepts fixed voltage in its USB-C). For the B+, I assume it is the same but look in the docs/wiki what power options it has. I used the 5B with an ASM1166, only 2 ports used of the 6, but all fine. You also need 5V for 3.5inch HDDs, how do you plan that?

[dominik]

Hi - I’m looking to replace my Synology DS414Slim NAS units. New Synology units mean I’ll need to sell my first-born’s organs so I’m looking into jerry-rigging my own SMBC solution.

Synology for sure is really expensive for it’s specs,
but most part is for their software and that one is great for sure. You are going rough path where there are many resources but software side is hard

I’ll take the opportunity to run a PLEX server from it plus increase the storage capacity to 80TB (5x 20TB 3.5" SATA III HDD striped with RAID 5 for parity).

So Your requirements are 5x 3.5" sata drives and plex as service.
what about network speed, size, power consumption?

Raspberry Pi 5 with separate cables and drive-tray connected to either RADXA Penta HAT or M.2 NVMe JMB585 5x SATA HAT card - but apparently RPi5 is a tad slower so I’m favouring the following RADXA options (both with 16 or 32GB to remove any potential RAID 5 performance bottle-necks)…

Pi5 has really poor IO for good and fast NAS,
only one pcie line and just 1Gbit networking. It may be ok when used with few 2.5inch drives, but SSD will be limited there for sure at i/o level and networking.

RADXA Rock 5B+ with M.2 NVMe JMB585 5x SATA card.

I would replace JMB585 with 6 port ASM1166 (the one from radxa is ok), it’s better, uses less energy and You still have one additional sata for cache drive (SSD)

I like that I can use an M.2 NVMe for the boot drive as YouTube tests suggest that the OS performance is much higher, which should help with the RAID 5 NAS performance.

This is not that important on NAS, many uses SD or USB pendrive to boot system there and once You are in this have really small impact on most services. If You want to focus on speed then upgrade network to 10G.

RADXA Taco with RADXA CM5

Taco was great project for pi4, but today it’s bit old.
CM5 is some update, but have to fit into pi4 io, and that is poor.

RADXA Rock 5B+ or Taco can be used with a 12v DC PSU (circa 150w) to provide power to the 5x 3.5" HDD or do I need to power the drives separately?

Both Taco and R5+ can be powered with 12V non PD PSU.
Taco and Penta Sata HAT provide power for all drives, For Rock 5B+ You can split power before board, no drive will start before SATA link up, so this is not a problem.

RADXA Taco can handle 5x 3.5" HDD being plugged directly into the existing onboard SATA ports?

3.5 inch drive won’t fit there, but You can plug it like Jeff:

(i.e. Taco used like a back-plane).

Why not just use backplane?

Thanks in advance for any help offered

I think You missed two interesting ideas:

1. Rock 5 ITX series, first version comes with 4x sata ports (and power ports for them) , additional sata ports are possible with m.2 E to sata (or dual sata). Plus version have additional m.2 slot instead of sata, but You can insert there ASM1166.
   If You are talking about NAS it will be big so size its not the case here. You will get comfortable board, easy to insert to many standard ITX case with default power supply.

2. Radxa Orion. This one is next gen ARM with more speed (both soc and ethernet) and much more IO. Yet again You will build pc-like box, but with better specs. It should be stable enough for NAS, but I’m not sure about plex support (any RK3588 has that already).

[justanothernoob]

Thanks radrocks

I hadn’t come across the ASM1166 - that looks like another nice option. Your comment has prompted me to check the differences and now I see that, while the Taco board might look better from the perspective of the convenience of 5 SATA ports built-in on-board, the Rock 5b+ processor supports PCIe 3x4 (rather than the Taco’s PCIe 2x1) which should avoid any bottle-necks with RAID 5 data transfer (i.e. difference of PCIe 3 with 4 lanes @ 3900 MB/s vs PCIe 2 with a single lane @ 500 MB/s).

So now I’m back to erring towards the Rock 5B+

Re. power to the HDDS … I was hoping that the 12v/13mp external power supply would provide sufficient power. Do the drives ALSO need a 5v power supply?

[radrocks]

Re. power to the HDDS … I was hoping that the 12v/13mp external power supply would provide sufficient power. Do the drives ALSO need a 5v power supply?

I never heard or seen 3.5inch HDDs that work without also 5V
But ultimately, your HDDs should have a specification/datasheet from the vendor, so read that.

For just 1 HDD you can do:

SATA on Rock5B via M.2 E-key_board or USB3_connector

[IMG_20250529_131453] The white old floppydiskdrive connector is on GPIO 4 and 6, I need that for 5V supply of HDD and maybe some more small things/electronics. Used 8mm HSS metal drill, in the 5th level of the aluminum about 3 mm spaced and making it square with a metal saw, disassembled and put through the holes.

[justanothernoob]

Thanks Dominik. It does look like the R5B+ might be a better option than the Taco (or RPi5) but I’ll need to look into the ITX and Orion options.

Re. 10Gb ethernet … I kinda figured that 2.5 Gbps would more than keep up with the SATA III HDD speeds but I can’t lie, the thought of 10 Gbps is kinda sexy. However … with just the one M.2 NVMe3 M-key I guess I’ll be using that for the SATA ports and the E-key for wifi. At 7000 MB’s transfer speeds , the M.2 NVMe can probably handle a card that provides both 6x SATA ports + 10 Gbps ethernet. That combination of adapter probably doesn’t exist but maybe it there’s a dual-M.2 NVMe adapter that I can then use with both an ASM1166 and a 10Gbps card … that could be a pretty awesome setup. Thoughts?

[dominik]

Re. 10Gb ethernet … I kinda figured that 2.5 Gbps would more than keep up with the SATA III HDD speeds but I can’t lie, the thought of 10 Gbps is kinda sexy.

1Gbit in real world transfers is about 925Mbit, this gives 125MB/s in theory and about 115MB/s in practice including all control frames etc.
Same for 2.5G (usually about 2.37G), yet again depending on You network config:
Little less than ~2.8% TCP/IP overhead gives 288 MB/s
With VLANs and AES its little less than 95% = 280 MB/s

This means that 1GBit will limit most modern spinning drives (about 150MB/s, up to 220MB/s AFAIR). Far less than most SSDs (about 550MB/s) and nvme (3,8GB/s)
2.5G will be ok for single and non cached 3.5 drive, but usually with more than one (ie on RAID) data are distributed and performance is higher than single drive alone,

Remember about cache drives, with two modern ssds You will reach 10G speed on most transfers.

Of course You need to have something that can receive such speed on other end. If there are more than one device You need more bandwidth. It’s just not worth to do that for just few wifi devices.

However … with just the one M.2 NVMe3 M-key I guess I’ll be using that for the SATA ports and the E-key for wifi.

Are You still talking about Rock 5B+ or rather 5B?
First one has two m.2 slots, both 2x pcie 3.0 (and E slot for GSM, no pcie there)
Second one has one M m.2 with 4x pcie 3.0 + 1 m.2 A+E with one pcie 2.1 line.
You can split m.2 slot in Rock 5B into two (bifurcation)

At 7000 MB’s transfer speeds ,

?

the M.2 NVMe can probably handle a card that provides both 6x SATA ports + 10 Gbps ethernet.

NVMe is protocol for non volatile memory controllers, pcie is the one that makes those transfers high.
6x SATA ASM1166 uses 2x pcie 3.0 and it’s bit less bandwidth that 4 fast ssd can make, but yet again You can plug there slower 3.5 inch drives or mix them with ssds and probably most time not interface will be the limit.

10Gbit controller needs 2x pcie 3.0 or 1x pcie 4.0 to rech it’s own limit. You can also use it on pcie 1x 3.0 slot and reach about 8GBit. Of course You need to have 10GBit network stuff to receive this.

Rock 5B+ with two pcie 3.0 x2 m.2 slots can work perfectly with ASM1166 + AQC113 in second slot:

Some variants have additional eMMC drive on board (perfect for system, 3-4x faster than sd card, much more durable).
This makes really small and compact 6x drive RK3588 NAS.

That combination of adapter probably doesn’t exist but maybe it there’s a dual-M.2 NVMe adapter that I can then use with both an ASM1166 and a 10Gbps card …

Yet again - where You want to plug that? Take a look at Rock 5B vs 5B+ (and there is yet another 5T with two 2.5G ethernet ports). 5B has single m.2 slot with 4x pcie 3.0 and another for wifi - 1x A+E with pcie 2.1 line. There is cheap bifurcation adapter designed for 5B to split bottom m2. into two m.2 ports, each one with 2x pcie 3.0, which makes possible to attach two m.2 card there (very similar to 5B+) so You can have compact NAS with 10G and 6x SATA.
There are also more expensive pcie switches, that make possible to use more pcie cards, all sharing same one limit at the end. I tested such 2x 10Gbit + 2x ASM1166 card on Rock 5B, mostly was ok, but that’s not that compact build anymore, but to answer Your question - even those are possible and exists.

that could be a pretty awesome setup. Thoughts?

If You already have 10G ethernet on both sides - it worth to consider this speed. Otherwise just go with 2.5G and much simpler+smaller setup, that You can always upgrade. New chips for 10G ethernet are coming, we should see many cheap products with them. They should be smaller and produce less heat compared to current products.